A question about local longtail keywords
-
Hello all. This is my first interaction with SEOmoz, and I am still in my learning phases. I currently own a lawn fertilization company near Allentown, PA. I do the site for myself, and I am ranked number one for organic lawn care for my cities. My question may seem kind of elementary, but I just want to clear this up for myself. I want to start a side business doing SEO, and from what I gather step one is keyword research. I plan on building new sites to start as opposed to going in and fixing existing ones. So, I've been reading a lot on how to do keyword research and so forth. I will use my current business as a reference for my question. Should my main keywords be along the lines of "lawn care" and "lawn services", and then the location specific stuff be seperate? Or should my main keywords be "lawn care allentown, pa"? I plan on running my business solely for local businesses, so I am not to interested in competing with the entire world for keywords. I just wasn't sure how to differentiate my keyword research for local business. I hope that question made some sense. I am really starting to grasp the elements of SEO, but for some reason the keyword part of things perplexes me. Thanks for any responses!
-
I would make content pages for all of those. Not chest-thumping market-speak content, but informative stuff that is targeted for lawns in your area. Demonstrate your knowledge - that builds credibility and gets a page in the SERPs for each of those services that you sell.
-
I agree entirely. I am certainly just starting out here, so I am reading and constantly searching. The biggest issue is the vast amount of knowledge out there, some good and some bad, but all disconnected. I am also aware that targeting organic lawn care isn't getting me very far, but i'm still glad I at least got something on the number 1 rank :). However, when I built the site, I knew nothing about SEO, and I haven't had my hands on it since I started learning. I think my biggest issue right now is that I am doing all this research and learning, and there's more to read and more to learn, so I'm not actually "doing" anything. I'm really trying to just get something started to gain some real world experience. Thanks for the response!
-
Kane-
I must admit that since I am in the lawn care business, I do tend to lump some things in there. We do lawn fertilization, aeration and seeding, tree and shrub treatments, and perimeter pest control. I suppose I need to broaden my horizons a bit for seo. My main focus is on the lawn fertilization side of things, so I tend to gear all of my questions toward that aspect. I could also add some "city pages" to target traffic for the other areas in which we work.
-
Ryan,
Casey makes a point, but I still think you are getting ahead of yourself. You have lawn care tips which no one searches on. However there are over 550K searches on Lawn care How To. You have to research your own site and see what needs to be done. For Allentown as a location add, there are no searches. That is just not a good thing to do when there are this many misses.
To go from where you are to providing SEO for others, you need to read all you can on this site and not be bothered to be wrong and ask questions. There is a ton of knowledge on this site and others, avail yourself.
Hope we can help.
-
Ryan,
I think you are setting yourself up for problems if you base your business on what you have done with your lawncare company. The reason being that organic lawn care will not be nearly as competitive as others you will run into early. Here is what I would do:First, ask the client what they believe people search on.
Second, most people will already have a site and your job will be to determine whether or not they need a new site. (In my experience most do). So those who have sites, look at where their traffic is coming from now. Look at the keywords in analytics that people are using. If there are a lot of not availables, that will produce a bit more of a problem. We are seeing up to 30% on some clients. (Use WMT for finding these).
Then take and do an adwords search utilizing broad and exact match. My reasoning here is that you will find different values from industry to industry and from term to term:
If you have a keyword that has 50K searches a month in broad and 500 in exact, you are not close on what people are searching on.(maybe rarely) But if you have say 50K broad and 20k in exact...ahh hahh.
Yes you can use other tools from various vendors , but i still prefer Googel keywords tool first and foremost.
Every vertical will be different. Make sure you are also looking at on page, etc. and that all is done there.
Best
-
Here is a link to start, they may just provide lawn care, but look at all of these variations: http://ubersuggest.org/?source=web&query=lawn+care&language=English%2FUSA&format=html
I would make one page going after 1 set of keywords (though only 2 or 3 MAX). Never create more than one page that may compete with another page on your site.
You may have one page on lawn care Allentown, PA, and other pages on:
- Lawn care tips
- winter lawn care
- summer lawn care
- lawn care service
- lawn maintenance
- lawn care quote
Etc, etc... Some of those pages make since to combine on one page like "lawn care service" & "lawn maintenance". Just make sure it works for not just Google, but the user also.
-
That's not quite right Ryan - Lawn care companies don't just provide lawn care, they also provide yard maintenance, shrub trimming, lawn treatment, landscape service, lawn mowing, yard service, edging, aerating, new sod lawns, weeding, and probably more services that I haven't thought of here.
See where I'm headed with this? Optimize a page for each of those, and don't just include the keyword 5 times - actually provide some unique content on each page that a site visitor would find helpful and makes your company look good.
Also, don't spend time creating pages for "lawn care Allentown" and "Allentown lawn care." Google knows they're the same and it will just look spammy.
-
To add to my question for local businesses- I understand we should only optimize for a small amount of keywords per page. This is great for sites that talk about a lot of stuff. But, a lawn care company provides only one thing- lawn care. So, can I make multiple pages that are optimized for the same keyword set? How do I create content on other pages when really there's only a select number of keywords relevant to my business?
-
Great response, and thank you. So basically, the research is to decide the best order or annunciation of particular words, ie. lawn services allentown vs. allentown lawn services. So its geared more toward choosing one over the other, which I think makes perfect sense. What do you do when you're not sure what keywords to start with? For instance, I have a future client once I get established who operates a vehicle graphics company. It could be labeled as vehicle graphics, vinyl car wrap, truck lettering, etc. Do you use the same process for deciding which of these to use? Just go by search volume and difficulty? My biggest fear is optimizing for a keyword no one is searching for, and something like vehicle graphics often comes down to specific geographical area. People in california may search for truck lettering, while people in allentown may search for vehicle graphics. Any input on this, considering google doesn't get very location specific?
-
Hi Ryan,
The best place to start is obviously the Google Keyword tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . There are soooo many ways to to research and come up with keyword combinations, but for local keywords the Google keyword tool will be just fine as you usually arent targeting more than 20.
So lets take the word "lawn services" and "Allentown, PA" and combine them, now you have:
- Allentown PA lawn services
- Allentown lawn services
- lawn services Allentown
- lawn services Allentown PA
I usually start off with doing this for my initial "top of my head keywords", and also include any relevant surrounding cities. You can make a huge list like this easily in excel.
Plug these into the google keyword tool - make sure you select "Exact Match" from the left column.
From here you can now see the estimated search traffic - note, there has been some debate to how accurate this is, but you can still see what keywords are searched more than others. You can also see any related terms and ideas which are usually helpful in growing your keyword list. If you see a related keyword idea, do the same as you did before with the geo variations before and after.
Other tools which will help you come up with keyword variations before you plug them into Google Keyword tool:
I hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Relevant but not-relevant keywords impact to SEO
Hello, I would like to know if the selection of individual keywords(that are not primary, secondary or tertiary) are important for SEO regardless of the relevancy to the page topic. I am wondering how much of a contribution a non-P1/P2/P3 can make in terms of SEO? For example it is a product page and I have built my content with P1,P2&P3 based only on the product and its properties itself. Do you think that a content gap for the page could be the production process of that product? So even if it is a product and its properties page, I can add 2 sentences about the production, so that I can drive more traffic by including these 2 informative sentences.? EXAMPLE:
Keyword Research | | Siir
So lets' say my topic is "hair types" (P1) and my subtopics are "Straight," "wavy," and "curly"(P2s) which I used as subtitles. But throughout the page, I am planning to add some relevant but not-directly-relevant keywords here and there since they have high metrics and volumes. For example a potential sentence I can add: "innovative hair products these days can offer amazing results for the desired hair types". It is not specifically about "hair types" but I am using the keyword "innovative hair products" (good metrics keyword) which may help for the traffic... Another potential not-so-direct sentence can be: "For all hair types, the hair damages are common: heat damage, chemical damage and mechanical damage". Would adding this extra sentence where I am not specifically talking about "hair types" (my topic) but "hair damages" and damage examples (off-topic high metric keywords) help me to drive traffic to my website? And how much of an impact would it be?0 -
How to check the competition value of a Keyword.
Hi, How to check the competition value of a keyword in 2017 and how to get the low competitive keywords.
Keyword Research | | green.h1 -
Keyword difficulty report - am I stupid??
Hi, Im a programmer but SEO newbie and I am trying out Moz Pro. To be honest I feel really disheartened right now, I find the world of SEO very difficult and full of conflicting information. Anyway, I am trying to get my head around the Keyword difficulty tool in order to determine what keyword I want to go after and what I would need to do in order to outrank the competitors. The website with the highest PA, most external links to the domain (4000 versus around 80-90), the most linking root domain and the best on page optimasations ranks nr 5. The website that ranks 1 is the only one with good social signals. All of the websites has the keyword in the page title. What am I missing? This makes no sense to me. Is this Keyword tool reliable? VERY grateful for any help from you guys.. /Emma
Keyword Research | | EmmaGrey0 -
Include Location in Keywords?
I understand Google's local search automatically searches keywords with the location you are searching from. For example if I'm searching from Calgary and query "best shoe repair", Google knows I'm searching from Calgary and presents Calgary based results. I'm using Google's new Keyword Planner tool which allows for city based search results, meaning I don't have to include "Calgary" in the keywords I submit. The question I have is should I be attaching "Calgary" to my keywords for on-page optimization, and why or why not? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | reidsteven750 -
Top keywords
Hi, Where can I get a reliable list of the top 1000 keywords searched for over the last few months or 2012 or whatever? Thanks
Keyword Research | | jwdl0 -
Weekly Keyword Ranking Report Question
Howdy folks! Okay so apologies for the n00b question, and additional apologies for going over ground that's potentially already been ploughed. I'm compiling a tally of the Weekly Keyword Ranking Report for a client. For the past three reports, the particular keyword I'm logging has remained in the same position. However the Change column shows it as having decreased in rank, by the same amount every week. If there has been no change in the ranking, I would have thought it would display as "Unchanged". As it stands, it shows up in the Declined category, and that seems odd to me. Anyone have an idea as to why this would be happening? Thanks for any input you can provide! Kevin
Keyword Research | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Newbie question about keyword difficulty tool
Hi guys, It's my first day here ate seomoz and I got intrigued about the results from the keyword difficulty tool. Even though I do understand the results, I noticed the ranking analysis table has some highlighted cells and some of them have a dark checkmark sign inside. What exactly do they mean? I couldn't find it anywhere. Cheers from Brazil. i0tzl.png
Keyword Research | | lenineto0 -
Is it bad to optimize for tier one keywords only?
Hello, My site is about personalized cards, and I have optimized (rank A) each sample page to the main topic of the card (eg: sapo pepe). So when people search for that keyword (sapo pepe), my page ranks high. Now, if instead of checking the optimization for "sapo pepe" I check for "cards sapo pepe" I get an F, because the keyword is not there. Thing is that people search for different tier 2 keywords, like "cards, models, examples, etc" and I cannot put that many keywords in the page... My question is: does Search Engines rank you high if you optimize your page for a subset of the keywords people search for? I understand that if someone optimizes for "cards sapo pepe" they would get higher than my site. Hope I was clear, any comment is appreciated! Thanks, MAriano
Keyword Research | | regalatufoto0